The Serpents

Mara stirs inside the belly of a cha siu bao. The air is warm and sweetly scented; she turns her face, sighing into the soft, plush bun. With eyes still closed and clinging to the remnants of a dream, she becomes gradually aware of the damp and sticky sensation coating her skin. Beneath the sweetness of the barbequed pork is the savoury tang of her own sweat, the olfactive reminder that the hours will continue whittling away despite the showers that need to be taken and the checklists that wait to be regarded. 

The sudden crash of Porpor’s stainless steel wok clattering to the floor startles her from sleep and she gives up trying to find her way back. Groggily, with sleep still crusting her eyes, she blinks at the ceiling. Morning light moving between the shadows of tree limbs mottles her hasty paintwork to cover up the mould colony she’d uncovered last year. Probably not the best practice, but it was a rash bandage she’d applied, a precaution taken before her newfound friends (or group members really, but she hadn’t known where they stood) had come over to work on their presentation. Not that anyone had so much as glanced away from their screens long enough to hold a conversation with eye contact, let alone cast their eyes skyward to examine her ceiling. Anyway, all communication had cut off after the assignment was complete, so she'd guessed that answered her question about their friendship status. 

The hiss of oil hitting a hot pan and the heavenly aroma of fried onions and garlic is what finally pushes her out of bed. She unplugs her phone from the charger on the nightstand and the screen lights up. 

9:47 AM. 

11 snoozed alarms. 

2 notifications. 2 email notifications. 

She clicks into the app and, before a smile can even form, her mouth falls flat. Of course. One is generic university correspondence, while the other is spam, advertising a buy–one–get–one–free pizza deal “for those lazy Summer pizza feast nights”. The irony of it all. She deletes the email, and once again, her inbox is a clean, white slate. 

She pushes her feet into her slippers, the soles so worn she can feel the grooves in the floorboards beneath her toes, and emerges to bask in the full glory of her grandma’s cooking. 

“Ah, so you finally wake up!” Porpor tuts with a grin, beckoning her over with a wave of her chopsticks. “Come try my soup and tell me if it needs more salt.”

It is only a half lie this time to tell her grandma she’s going out to meet friends, but she can’t ignore the guilt twisting her gut as Porpor’s eyes brighten and her pale hands wrap Mara in a warm hug as she sends her off. When she turns around, Porpor is still standing in the doorway watching her go, a small smile lifting her face. 

Mara fiddles with the magazine cutout in her pocket. She’s trying something new. This is good. She’ll be a whole new person after this. That’s a good thing. 

She pulls the cutout from her pocket and her heart stutters, a gasp lodging in her throat. It’s an ad for a washing machine and half an image of a faucet. Nonono. She didn’t take the wrong sheet did she? Hurriedly, she turns the paper over and it’s there. Relief rushes through her, calms her racing heart.

Build Your Own Friend

Advanced Cloning Services

2 Bouller Lane

Call upon arrival 737-736-8463

Fingers trembling slightly, she plugs the address into her maps app, watching her path being routed, a serpent wending its way through the city streets before slinking into its outer suburbs. She tucks the paper into her pocket and maintains a casual pace as she follows the serpent’s trail. 

None of the city folk glance twice at the girl who isn’t old enough to be working a city job, too busy rushing to their next meeting, fingers flying furiously over keyboards; too focused on when the barista will get to making their coffee, feet tapping impatiently. She jerks from spittle sprayed across her cheek as she passes a man barking rapidly into his phone. He doesn’t even notice and she hurries past, quickly wiping her cheek on her sleeve. 

It is when she reaches the quiet suburbs on the other side of the city that she begins to feel

watched. The strays here aren’t bony with hunger like the ones darting the streets of the city. No, the strays here have been gorged with food, yet carry the undeniable stink of rotting meat as they slink past. Mara tries not to gag as a rotund tortoiseshell tabby eyes her from across the street, something red and chunky hanging from its mouth, and slowly makes its way closer. Its eyes are a bright lemon green, the colour of detergent, and their sharpness unsettles her. The humanness of its head cocking slightly, its eyes slimming narrowly, as if trying to place her, quickens her pace. 

The only human she spots is an elderly woman sitting on a rocking chair in front of her house, so frail and hidden beneath her layers of knitted blankets that she would have missed her if not for the humming. Her face is small but her bones are strong, as if her skin and flesh had crumpled in on itself. Her lips purse tightly as she hums a slightly off-key version of “You Are My Sunshine”. Mara quietly walks past, but when she turns to glance back as she crosses the road the woman is gone, though her rocking chair continues to sway and the wind still carries the tune of her song.

2 Bouller Lane looks like any other house on the street. Small, cottage-style, seemingly empty. In fact, apart from the old lady and the numerous strays skulking the streets, the entire town seems to be empty. Mara stops in front of the tall wooden door and rings the number on the paper. The line connects immediately.

“Hello, Mara,” a woman’s voice answers smoothly. “We’ve been expecting you.”

Mara falters. How do they know her name? 

“Well, what are you doing? We can’t possibly serve you out there!” The woman’s voice is light, but there is no mirth in her tone. 

“Yep — I — thank you,” Mara stutters, reaching for the doorknob. The door is ajar. Had it always been like that? A strange green luminescence seems to emit from around the door and she hesitates, images of the cat’s green eyes suddenly flashing in her mind. No. It’s just her anxiety speaking. She needs to do this. For her. For Porpor. 

She pushes the door open fully and steps into a well-lit and surprisingly welcoming hallway. Pot-

bellied candles nurture dainty flames, casting a mellow glow over the space. She bends down to remove her shoes and when she straightens, a woman is there. 

“Sorry, I didn’t see you there,” she manages over her gasp. 

“Mara.” The woman’s voice is just as smooth, just as robotic, in person. 

Mara nods, somehow getting the feeling the woman knows why she’s there. 

“Come here, Mara,” the woman urges her into an adjoining room further down the hall. Her eyes are very dark and they never leave her own. Shadows seem to deepen in the hollows of the woman’s face and Mara recalls the flickering candles lighting up the room. Her eyes dart to find wisps of grey smoke. The candles have indeed been put out, and yet even in the dark, the woman’s eyes shine like black bulbs. 

“I’m Dr. A.” A pause. “I’m going to help you.” A smile. Mara tries to return one of her own. 

“Thank you,” she remembers to say. 

“So!” Dr. A claps her hands twice and her smile broadens rapidly. “You want a clone who will be your friend, yes?” Movement from the corner of the room catches Mara’s eye. A woman identical to Dr. A steps forward until she is one step away from the doctor’s left shoulder. “Make you friends.” Another woman steps out from the corner and takes the place behind Dr. A’s right shoulder. Her clones. “Yes, my clones,” Dr. A acknowledges, reading her mind. Mara glances at her sharply. “But don’t be rude, they prefer to be called the Serpents.” 

They stare at her, shrewd and watchful like the tabby, though their eyes are a shade darker and where there should be pupils and scleras there is only the colour of mouldy olives. 

“But most of all, you want a clone who can socialise and not drive people away with your forced remarks and awkward silences.” It is then Mara notices the door in the corner where the Serpents appeared and through it, lined up in neat rows and columns, a vast hall full of Dr. A’s clones. 

Cold bars clamp around both of her wrists with heavy clangs. Mara snaps her head to her wrists, the bars locking her to the wall she doesn’t recall backing up against. The two Serpents who had been standing behind Dr. A are now at her side. The one on the left reaches into Mara’s zippered pocket and retrieves the wad of cash she had stuffed in there, handing it to Dr. A. Up close, Mara notices the crooked set of her nose, as if it had been broken, smashed into her own skull so many times there was no chance of getting it straight again. In the distance she hears Dr. A tsk something about how this foolish girl really thought she could pay a mere $300 for her clone. Mara whips her head around to glance at the Serpent on her right, noticing the higher placement of her cheekbones, her prominent bone structure poorly concealed beneath some light makeup. These were not clones. There were some things you could not change. She bashes her wrists against the metal, struggling against their hold to no avail. 

“I know what you want, Mara. And I will give it to you. Hurting yourself won’t help. All you have to do is be very patient,” Dr. A narrates like she has a hundred times before, her voice bored. 

Mara screams, but the cold hand the Serpent has clamped over her mouth captures the sound. 

“You will be perfect, Mara,” the doctor promises. 

Something ice cold presses into her neck. The cold moves up and down her neck, slithering, probing, searching, and then it is sharp, piercing through her skin. 

“There’s just one physical effect,” Dr. A sighs, her voice coming in from farther away. She gestures behind her to her clones – her Serpents – to their straight backs, their unblinking eyes. The colour of serpentine.